Specifications

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14 Multimedia – Sound and Images from Around the World
Using the Internet to deliver audio and video is hampered by the limited speed available using dialup.
Broadband eases this chokepoint opening the door to Internet delivery of radio and TV. Peer-to-peer
sharing of music and video is controversial because it makes it difficult for content owners to charge usage
fees. Direct distribution of content is in its infancy. Deployment of broadband opens the door to new
methods of distributing content.
14.1 Real Audio
Real Audio is the most popular format for streaming audio and video. The basic client player is free.
Real Audio implements both a player and compression mechanism. Since most users are limited to dialup
the service is optimized for slow connections. Some programs are encoded in multiple data rates so
broadband user have access higher quality audio.
14.2 MP3
MPEG MP3 compression format provides near CD-quality audio at 128Kbp/s about a tenth the raw music
data rate. MP3 has become the most popular digital music format. We use the Music Match Jukebox
player. This is a MP3 player, and converts CDs to MP3 files.
The new file server has is enough disk space to create an online CD library. We converted all our CDs and
some records to MP3 format. This enables any computer with an MP3 player to access the entire library.
CD quality audio requires 128Kbp/s, this translates to a megabyte per minute of playing time so large
libraries consume tens of gigabytes. This is large but well within the reach of a cheap hard drive.
14.3 Windows Media Player
Microsoft developed proprietary audio and video compression formats that can only be viewed with
Windows Media Player. They are also beginning to deploy provisions for secure distribution of music.
Paving the way for direct purchase or subscription based music services.
15 Printing – Data to Paper
Networking the printer allows any computer on the LAN to access it. Printers can be shared by using a
network ready printer, an external print server, or Windows peer-to-peer print sharing.
Initially we used Windows peer-to-peer print sharing. The printer was connected to the laptop used to share
the Internet connection. It worked okay for occasional use but we ran into problems of lost and aborted
print jobs. This typically occurred if the connection sharing software needed to establish an Internet
connection or if simultaneous print jobs were started from multiple computers. We attempted to use a print
server to address this problem. However we found that the HP 720 Inkjet printer used Windows Graphic
Device Interface (GDI) that is incompatible with print servers.
We acquired a new HP 2000 professional Inkjet printer and a HP JetDirect 300X print server. Many
different print servers are on the market. We chose the HP print server mainly to minimize potential
compatibility problems. The print driver runs locally on the machine requesting the print job. The output of
the driver is sent to a virtual printer port, which is the print server. The print server in turn delivers the print
job to the printer. This works much better then peer-to-peer printing. The print server itself is a little box,
the size of an analog modem. It has a built in web server to manage the print server remotely.